As threatened, here is the montage of all the shots I have taken of the rear of the house since we first bought it, right up until us moving in last week. Enjoy!
(YouTube seems to have removed the dissolve transition. oh well.) you can download it for smoother playing by clicking on this internal link: calthorpe quick montage
Since Saturday Maryrose and I have been living in the house!!
In the picture you can see our carpenter doing some final finishing on the windows.
There would have been more photos of the progress of the windows, which have really come together over the last week, but due to BT (see previous post) we’re not actually going to have an internet connection until tomorrow (if we’re lucky) so they remain on my hard drive.
I might do a montage. you have been warned.
Other than that, I think I’ve written just about all I can about this renovation project, which quite frankly has gone on for bleedin’ ever.
Cheers,
Philip
The snow is snowing, and we finally have windows on our extension!
It’s not quite over yet though – the windows don’t have any glass in 
I think they look rather spiffing!
No picture today. No nothing, in fact. Thanks to BT.
If you try and telephone me today, or yesterday, the day before and god knows how many days from now, you will not succedd. Why? Is all thanks to BT.
As we plan to move into our renovated cottage very soon, I thought it sensible to contact the phone company and ask them to connect us up. All that needs to happen is for an engineer to pop along to our house and take a wire from the telegraph pole and connect it to a wire in our roof.
It all started so well, with the chap at the call centre handling things very well and seeming to understand my situation in a preternaturally human fashion. They would disconnect my existing phone contract on the same day that the engineers comes round to connect my new house. Simple!
Except we al know that that’s not what happened, don;t we? Of course, it’s mind-dumbingly obvious what happened – the engineers just did not turn up! No calls, no voicemail, no emails, no reason. its not as if they were on a tight schedule – I had been given the slot of 8am to 1pm. Nothing.
So, of course, the disconnection went ahead, without a corresponding connection.
So I call them up. After 2 and a half minutes of options I am told that their lines are closed at this time. Lines closed?!? Its the phone company?!?! You’d think they’d have someone to answer the phone!!!
So there’e now nothing I can do about it until Monday, when they’ll probably tell me that the engineer will next be in my area in July and that, no, they are unfortunately unable to reconnect my previous number. Sorry sir.
Bum.
Well, things are being done, and although the part of the cottage that you can see in this picture is still not finished, we might make an attempt to camp out there this weekend
We’ve had a breeze-block wall taken down and replaced with bricks, which is nice
We’ve had tiles laid on the kitchen floor, so that is coming together. 
And yesterday i took delivery of three and a half tonnes of gravel, so that’s all been laid out, which makes it look like a proper house, not just a building site!
Chugging along at the moment, with the slate being delivered (and unloaded by yours truly). It should be being laid this week, so yay
The slate is 60cm by 40cm. Lovely!
Work is progressing, and the garden room now looks fantastic!
There haven;t been any pics for a couple of weeks, as i have been at home with my head down, looking for work. As a result I haven’t been round to the house before dark.
Last week we had a hiccup with external walls being questioned by all and sundry. Much talk later, it looks like its going to be sorted out. Unbelievable that this wasn’t picked up six months ago when the walls were built, but I guess thats the way it crumbles.
I have just spent forty minutes on the phone to BT arranging for the phone lines to be sorted out, so it looks like we are getting closer and closer to… the end!!!
Oh yes, and here’s where I put a nail through a water pipe :S
Blimey.
No photo for this one, as the news is not good.
Building Control have declared the walls that our previous builder made to be below minimum standard, so they need to be sorted out before they will give the thumbs up to the whole project. And I put a nail through a hot water pipe, meaning that aside from the plumber needing to come out again, we’ll need to get a ceiling replastered as well.
Oh well, onwards and upwards. All i need now is a job… anyone?
As we’ve basically been just tidying up, hoovering and putting floorboards into place today – and this does not equal a fascinating photograph – I thought I’d put up (an equally riveting) video of the air source heat pump working so that you can see how noisy it is.
This is a point of contention, as we had to submit a planning application for the pump, which includes a large fan, as local councils are not really sure what they are yet. Of course a bloke came round to put up a poster on the fence announcing the application, then helpfully went round to all our neighbours to tell them that he didn’t know what an ASHP was, but that we were having put a planning application in because it was very noisy – thanks, mate.
So three of our neighbours lodged objections. Three other neighbours, who know what an ASHP is, lodged recommendations. Four months and about fifty man hours later the application was accepted, on the condition that we erect a fence that uses noise-reducing material. This you can see in the video.
All in all, the fence does reduce the noise, but even when you’re standing right in front of it, it still makes less noise than the outlet from an oil-fired boiler, which is the norm for this part of the world.
Just keep saying to yourself: “The oil’s not running out, the oil’s not running out…”
